Michael Schroeder writes:
On Fri, May 07, 2010 at 02:45:06PM +0200, Joachim Schrod wrote:
I have always wondered what difference are between patches and "normal" software updates. It's probably not the bandwidth, as long as delta rpms are used, so I suspect it's more a kind of policy thing.
A patch is just some mechanism to force a minimal package version. It's like a package with a lot of conflicts. For example, the latest libesmtp patch "patch:libesmtp" more or less contains the equivalent of: Conflicts: libesmtp < 1.0.4-158.2.1 Conflicts: libesmtp-devel < 1.0.4-158.2.1
That I knew.
So, 'zypper up' will install the latest versions if there are no problems. 'zypper patch' will force the update, maybe resulting in solver problems where the user has to choose some a solution.
Now that you tell that, it's clear. Though I wouldn't have realized that consequence of my (technical) knowledge.
(This has nothing to do with deltarpms, 'zypper up' also uses deltarpms if possible. Deltarpms are just a way of reducing download size.)
I knew that as well; that's why I wrote above "it's not the bandwidth", though I could have stated it more concise, if I now reread my post again. My question really was above the technical level: What consequences has it for an admin if he chooses to use zypper patch instead of zypper update? I now see several of them: -- Only openSUSE updates are installed, not from OBS (or other) repos. (Which may be a good or a bad thing, as David's whining about his unwanted MariaDB update shows... ;-)) -- zypper patch might update packages from openSUSE that zypper up doesn't touch owing to solver problems, maybe requiring user action to resolve problems. Very interesting. It seems I should add a "check needed patches" action to my zypper-up-based update process, to check if the 2nd case happens. Joachim -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Joachim Schrod Email: jschrod@acm.org Roedermark, Germany -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org